


So, I Met This Guy On Grindr

by travesty



Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: Grindr as a Plot Device, Humor, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, meet cute gone wrong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 23:01:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travesty/pseuds/travesty
Summary: The year is 2009, twenty-year-old Guillermo de la Cruz is toiling away at Panera Bread when he's introduced to the hottest new dating app on the market.Is this the start of something beautiful?Knowing Grindr, probably not.
Relationships: Guillermo de la Cruz & Jeremy, Guillermo de la Cruz/Nandor the Relentless
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	So, I Met This Guy On Grindr

**Author's Note:**

> So, Grindr came out in 2009, right? And Guillermo also became Nandor's familiar in 2009. 
> 
> Coincidence? Most definitely. But I'm running with it anyways.

2008 ended with a bang. Not in a metaphorical sense, mind you, Silvia de la Cruz had dragged her moody, nineteen-year-old son out onto their balcony to engage in the time-honored New Year’s tradition of making as much goddamn noise as possible. By the time the two had retreated from the biting chill of winter to the relative warmth of their apartment with laughter on their lips and fullness in their hearts, Guillermo’s ears were ringing. 

This had been their New Year’s routine for as long as he could remember, yet, there was a certain finality to that year's festivities that left him feeling reflective.

Guillermo had never been one to engage in the tradition of New Year's resolutions. In his experience, they always amounted to little more than guilt and disappointment, that is, if you could keep up with them for more than a week. But, something about that year, standing in the winter air with his mom banging pots and pans over their heads, he found himself, without fully realizing it, promising that 2009 would be different. Something was going to change. Something  _ had _ to change. He was finally going to make something of his life.

~~

The mop hit the beige tile with an unpleasant  _ slap,  _ sending murky water cascading into the cracks in its grout. It had been five months since Guillermo had made that promise to himself. He was twenty now, winter had long since melted into a rainy spring that was rapidly bleeding into a tentative summer, and he had done little to change the course of his existence. 

Still, he had a job, as meager as the pay was, and it was enough to leave him with the lingering hope that if he just kept working, kept putting his hours in, kept biding his time, he could save up enough to do  _ something.  _ What that something was, however, he was not entirely sure.

Guillermo sighed, dragged the mop over a set of muddy footprints, and debated the logistics of skipping town and becoming a baker or something. He  _ was _ really good at baking. 

“Guillermo, buddy, you’ve got to see this!”

A voice drew him from his baking reverie. It was his friend Jeremy, who nearly slipped on the freshly mopped path before miraculously righting himself with the help of the store’s wet floor sign. Jeremy came to visit him at work on a regular basis, mostly because he was unemployed and had nobody else to talk to, while Guillermo, who had sold his soul to Panera Bread for $7.25 an hour, was practically a captive audience. 

“I’m not reading another Twilight fanfic, Jeremy; they never get Bella right.” 

“Okay, first off, they do too get Bella right; you’re just jealous because their fics are more popular than yours,” he said, and Guillermo tried (and failed) not to roll his eyes. “Second, that’s not even what I came to show you.”

That had Guillermo’s interest piqued. Rarely did Jeremy have anything of substance to talk about. Beyond video games, fanfiction, and his nosebleeds, his life was about as interesting as a piece of cardboard. And that was saying something coming from Guillermo, who regularly considered laundry day among the most interesting in his week. For Jeremy to bring up a subject  _ other _ than the aforementioned three was near unheard of.

“Really?” he asked, leaning forward against the mop handle. Thankfully, the store was virtually empty, and his manager had yet to pick up on the fact that Guillermo had abandoned the arduous task of cleaning the floor. “What is it?”

“Okay so, I was looking at like, a totally normal site earlier, and I got this ad,” he started, fiddling with his clunky 2008 iPhone. “It was really random ‘cuz, again, the site I was on was super normal.”

Guillermo feels his excitement begin to fizzle out like a premature firework, “if this is some weird sex thing–“

“No!” Jeremy interrupted, “I mean it could be, but that’s not the main  _ point _ . Look, just,” he shoved his phone into Guillermo’s hands.

On the screen was an ad, like he’d said, for a dating service. A  _ men’s _ dating service. He gave Jeremy a withering look. The app was called Grindr, and from what he could glean from the backdrop of a shirtless beefcake, it wasn’t exactly wholesome.

“Why are you showing me this?” he asked, handing Jeremy back his phone.

Jeremy looked flustered as if he hadn’t expected that reply. “Well, I uh, I just thought since, you know, you like dudes, you might wanna try it out or something.” 

"Jeremy, that's—" before Guillermo could finish that thought, his manager (who had finally looked up for long enough to notice he'd given up on his task) shouted at him to get back to work. He had been rescued. "Look, I have to go. I'll call you later."

"Yeah, yeah, of course. But—just, you know, think about it, okay?"

After parting ways with Jeremy, Guillermo returned his attention to the soaked tile with renewed vigor.

~~

The springs of his twin-sized bed groaned in protest as Guillermo collapsed on top of the duvet. After Jeremy had left, the lunch rush hit, and they were inundated by a fresh wave of suburban moms and businessmen who simply could not go without their afternoon bread bowls. Never a dull moment at Panera Bread. 

With the sudden influx of customers, Guillermo had barely had the chance to sit and breathe, let alone chew over the information Jeremy had provided him with. Now that he was alone, however, the conversation from earlier came floating into his mind.

It was a bad idea, right? Those kinds of services—they weren't  _ built _ with guys like him in mind. 

_ But _ Guillermo would be lying if he said that the idea didn't come with a spark of intrigue. He had never been in a relationship, and, outside of an immensely regrettable kiss he'd shared with Jeremy in sophomore year, he'd barely stepped two feet in the direction of romance.

If he wanted to get down to brass tacks about it, Guillermo would have to admit that he was lonely. So much so that even a man so impossibly dense that he had been scammed by catfish at least twenty times in the past year had picked up on it enough to suggest an alternative to Guillermo's current strategy of 'wait and see.’

Maybe he'd take a look. Just a quick peek to see what he was working with. 

With that justification supplied, it wasn't long before he had the app downloaded onto his dinky little smartphone and a full page of local men to scroll through.

Immediately he was struck by a feeling of invasiveness. These people had no say in who was looking at them; what if they didn't want Guillermo on their profiles? It seemed, at that moment, that the logical next step was to upload a photo. (To make sure that everyone was comfortable, of course.) That shot of him from Halloween, dressed as Armand from Interview with the Vampire, should do nicely enough for anyone looking to get a feel for what he was about. As if to sweeten the deal, he set his screen name to something simple, "G", just enough to maintain a veneer of anonymity.

And then he realized what he was doing.

Before he could chastise himself for his foolishness and set about scrubbing the app from his phone and burying his face in his pillow to scream, there was a notification. 

He'd received a message.

**Author's Note:**

> Who would have guessed that my very first fanfic would be an elaborate Grindr joke handled with full sincerity? There's got to be someone who saw this coming.
> 
> Don't you worry, smut is on its way. We're building to it, we're working our way up. Patience is a virtue and all that.


End file.
